Article 2

Psychology Today, Jan-Feb 1997 v30 n1 p58(6)

Evolution: the dissent of Darwin: - A discussion between zoologist
Richard Dawkins and computer scientist Jaron Lanier
Abstract: Richard Dawkins believes that natural selection is a
vicious process and that nature is indifferent to human concerns
about morality and ethics. To Jaron Lanier evolution is an
acceptable theory even though it cannot explain all human traits.

Even the pope now seems to be open to the idea of evolution. But can
Darwin's theory of natural selection explain morality, love, evil,
life on Mars, and why testicles hang outside the body? Two gifted
scientists debate these mysteries.
When zoologist Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene was published 20
years ago, it practically snuffed out many readers' belief in God
and in their own importance, for it described in stunning and
terrifying detail a world where all life was merely the conveyor
belt for the gene. Its mission: to replicate itself. DNA was the
fundamental and irreducible unit of life that spun itself endlessly
into the incredible diversity of flora and fauna. Everything we hold
most dear--acts of love, altruism, the painterly beauty of the
peacock's tail, the birth of a newborn--could, according to Dawkins,
be explained by the gene's attempt to survive, and to hitch a ride
on the fittest organism possible, the one most likely to mate and
reproduce. Darwinian natural selection was Dawkins's ruling theme.
The gene looked like the most purely selfish entity one could
imagine, but it was more like the Terminator--just programmed to
survive.
Since that time, Dawkins, who was recently appointed the first
Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at
Oxford University, has elaborated on his elegant if chilling theory
in the books The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, and most
recently, Climbing Mount Improbable. As Dawkins once stated, "Darwin
made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." Like
Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, Dawkins is one of those rare
scientists who have captured the popular imagination. And his
particular world view has profoundly influenced our interpretation
of nature, business, love, medicine, and life itself. Even ideas,
says Dawkins, are like genes. The fundamental unit of meaning, which
he calls the "meme," may be able to infect us like the renegade DNA
of v fuses. Does this mean that Nazism was just a powerful meme, an
epidemic of one nasty, highly infectious idea?
Of late there has been an outcry against Darwin and Dawkins. Last
summer, when Commentary magazine published an essay, "The Deniable
Darwin," by David Berlinski, it elicited a flurry of letters--from
scientists, businessmen, lawyers, chemists, biologists--so thick
that the published ones alone ran 37 pages. As one reader wrote,
"You have fired a shot in what is becoming a great moral revolution,
and it will be heard around the world."
To get to the heart of that revolution, we decided to host a debate
between Dawkins and the man who coined the term "virtual reality,"
Jaron Lanier. Lanier is a computer scientist and musician, a

visiting scholar at the Columbia University department of computer

science, a v siting artist at New York University's Tisch School of
the Arts, and a provocative thinker on evolution, morality, and
ideas. Lanier and Dawkins met last year at the New York City home of
John Brockman, a writer who holds salons on science and culture.
Lanier sees himself as a Darwinist who has no basic quarrel with
evolutionary theory, but who doesn't believe it's the only or most
apt metaphor for our lives. According to Lanier, natural selection
is only part of the human story, and we are more than just the
accidental result of a stream of digital information encoded in our
genes. In fact, what's best about us and civilization may be our
ability to thwart evolution.
JARON LANIER: I'm worried that evolution is being used in the wrong
way by all sorts of people who otherwise have almost nothing in
common. It's become a banner for New Agers, and for many in the hard
sciences. This annoys me no end, because evolution is the only
natural force that should be understood to be evil. The evolutionary
process that created us was cruel.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Treating evolution as though it were a good thing
is a point of view advanced by English biologist Julian Huxley in
the 1920s and 1930s. Huxley tried to make evolution into a kind of
religion. In contrast, his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, thought
that evolution was a thoroughly bad thing, and I agree with him. I
would hold it up as an awful warning.
JL: Here s the dilemma simply put: Most of us subscribe to the
belief that its not possible to draw a clean line between people and
the rest of nature. Then on the other hand, we also believe that
nature is amoral, that it doesn't revolve around human ethical
systems.
RD: Right.
JL: So its hard to figure out the basis of our morality. Either we
find ways in which we're different from nature, or we have to be
willing to judge part of nature as evil. I believe that as a
civilization we've helped thwart evolution, and that's good. Every
time we help the needy, or make it possible for a handicapped person
to live and pass on their genes, we've succeeded in defying the
process that created us.
RD: I believe natural selection represents a truly hideous sum total
of misery. When you look at something like a bounding lion, a
sprinting cheetah, and the antelopes they are bounding and sprinting
after, you're seeing the end product of a long, vicious arms race.
All along the route of that arms race lie the corpses of the
antelopes that didn't make it, and the lions and cheetahs that
starved to death. So it is a process of vicious misery that has
given rise to the immense beauty, elegance, and diversity that we
see in the world today. Nature is beautiful Even a cheetah as a
killing machine is beautiful. But the process that gave rise to it
is, indeed, nature red in tooth and claw.
However, you go further when you call evolution evil. I would simply
say nature is pitilessly indifferent to human concerns and should be

ignored when we try to work out our moral and ethical systems. We
should instead say, We're on our own. We are unique in the animal
kingdom in having brains big enough not to follow the dictates of
the selfish genes. And we are in the unique position of being able
to use our brains to work out together the kind of society in which
we want to live. But the one thing we must definitely not do is what
Julian Huxley did, which is try to see evolution as some kind of an
object lesson.
JL: But if we hope to separate ourselves from the awful history of
evolution that created us, we have a very difficult time defining
exactly how we're different.
RD: You can simply say that in humans there was a gradual emergence
of certain qualities that no other species has.
JL: Can you name those qualities?
RD: One of them is language. Another is the ability to plan ahead
using conscious, imagined foresight. Short-term benefit has always
been the only thing that counts in evolution; long-term benefit has
never counted It has never been possible for something to evolve in
spite of being bad for the immediate short-term good of the
individual. For the first time ever, it's possible for at least some
people to say, "Forget about the fact that you can make a short-term
profit by chopping down this forest; what about the long-term
benefit?" Now I think that's genuinely new and unique.
JL: Is survivability the only principle that generated our
attributes? What about the benefit for a phenomenon as odd as
testicles? Its as if a heavily armored tank were being ridden by a
driver in a balloon on the roof.
RD: Why do we have them dangling outside ourselves, rather than
safely cushioned inside?
JL: I'm familiar with the conventional explanation, which is that it
has to do with the management of heat. [Sperm cannot survive long at
body temperature.]
RD: And you understand the implausibility of that explanation?
JL: The evolutionary process has produced such spectacular
mechanisms for managing problems that would seem to be much more
difficult than coping with heat. And we have astonishing regulatory
mechanisms for heat in our body already I mean, we protect ourselves
from invading microorganisms and from extremes of heat and cold.
If it just turned out that it was impossible to pass along genes at
a particular body temperature, we could have evolved a different
body temperature that was appropriate to that process. So overall,
testicles do seem very strange to me.
RD: That's what I would have said. But are you familiar with Zahavis
handicap principle? It sounds really
problem of the "vulnerable balls" is
explanation.
Zahavi is an Israeli biologist whose
first put it forward in 1975, but he

way out, but I think the

well suited to this particular
idea was ridiculed when he
has recently been vindicated by

some clever mathematical modeling by Alan Grafen at Oxford

University. Zahavi and Grafen state that in any encounter in animals
where advertisement is important--and that's very, very often--an

advertisement is only believed if it's validated by being costly.

Translated into English, what the male is saying is, "Look how
powerful a male I am, because I can afford to wear my balls outside
my body, in the most vulnerable position. You'd better not mess with
me because I am proving my strength and my
JL: That's a sad thought, that advertising
sense, because of a universal mathematical
RD: The reason it works is that all males,

ability as a fighter."
might overpower common
principle.
even the ones who are not

strong, are forced to wear the badge of being strong, and the badge
of being strong is only believed if it is genuinely costly
JL: But, Richard, if this explanation is correct, why didn't we come
up with camouflaged testicles or perhaps four testicles with a
couple of backups inside? And why aren't our hearts or lungs
dangling in bags without any armor around them? Why wouldn't
evolution occasionally choose to advertise some other body part?
RD: Why is the bone of the skull so thick? Obviously to protect the
brain. The weakness of the Zahavi explanation is that you wheel it
out when you need to. When I'm asked questions like yours about
testicles, the best strategy may be to refuse to answer. Because if
you allow yourself to exercise your ingenuity in solving a
particular question, then people come up with another one that you
just can't think of an answer to. We're not testing the ingenuity of
the human mind here.
JL: Agreed. But a lot of people feel that if evolution can't explain
something why should they accept it at all? Yet the whole theory
doesn't have to be cast into doubt if it can't explain every
particular--such as the origin of our dreaded dangling. Scientists
don't know everything. They work with utmost patience to test one
idea at a time.
PT: Can we go back to foresight for a minute? If natural selection
didn't select for foresight but allows us to escape its dictates,
how does it survive?
JL: My answer would be that our excess of foresight is like
testicles. There are traits we can't fully explain. It might be
luck.
RD: I prefer to think of foresight as something which natural
selection gave us because it was once useful for hunting buffaloes.
We've been given big brains. which were once useful for a vet-satire
way of life in the plains of Africa. But now, having moved out of
the plains of Africa, those same brains have taken off in directions
which could never possibly have been visualized.
JL: By your own logic, foresight has to initially have been a happy
by-product of something that resulted in immediate survivsbility.
RD: You can use foresight in order to help yourself and your
children to survive. You can say, "If I drink all the water in the
well now because I'm thirsty. then my children will die of
starvation So I can prepare for the future and ration the water."
That's ordinary Darwinian survival, but it does involve foresight.
JL: But humans seem to have a capacity for foresight that is far
beyond what could have been useful with buffaloes.
PT: In the last five years, you, Richardm Dawkins, have become the
face, as much as there is a face, of Darwinian theory Is this
something you're comfortable with?

RD: I am aware that something like that may have happened in

Britain, but I'm quite surprised to hear you say that of the United
States. If it were true, I don't think I'd mind. I write books in
order to educate people about how we came to exist. As writer
Hilaire Belloc said, "When I am gone, I hope it may be said his sins
were scarlet, but his books were read."
PT: Do you think the battle over Darwinism has become much more
heated lately?
RD: I suppose that creationists are becoming more vocal in America.
I feel a need to do something about that, and I don't mince my
words, so I may be contributing to the heat.
JL: Its not just a conflict between creationists and Darwinists.
There's a large group of people who simply are uncomfortable with
accepting evolution because it leads to what they perceive as a
moral vacuum, in which their best impulses have no basis in nature.
RD: All I can say is, That's just tough. We have to face up to the
truth.
JL: That answer is not good enough anymore. People are reacting
against science. People feel science is telling them they're less
special, less responsible than they once believed.
The problem with a lot of evolutionary thought is that it goes
beyond history to make claims about who we are now, and why we do
what we do. Calling people hulking robots that deliver genes is no
more informative or true than saying people are mobile heat fins in
the service of entropy Human beings can be understood in many ways.
The genetic perspective alone can leave you feeling empty and
arbitrary Maybe if science were presented in a more compassionate
and humble way, it could help fill the void many of us feel inside.
PT: What are other perspectives science can offer?
JL: Well, I think that competition for survival is just one of many
self perpetuating processes. Look at music. Its everywhere, in all
human societies. and its obviously not essential for survival. It
might have begun as part of a survival mechanism--in the animal
kingdom, song attracts a mate--but it has long since spun off on its
own momentum. The same is true of love. Love is a trust that breeds
more trust. It perpetuates itself. Survivability is not necessarily
the sole determinant of genes.
PT: What's your reaction to the recent book Darwin's Black Box, by
Michael Behe? The author, a molecular biologist argues that
Darwinian selection cannot explain the incredible complexity that
occurs on a molecular level. He offers an explanation he calls
"intelligent design," which seems like a scientist's name for God.
RD: The argument of irreducible complexity is a very old one, and
it's one that Darwin himself faced when talking about things like
the eye. Without any backup, this argument states that something,
some X, is irreducibly complicated, and therefore it can't have
evolved gradually and God must have made it. Behe applies the
identical argument at the molecular level.
I'm not a molecular biologist. Behe is Why doesn't he stop being so
lazy? Instead of saying, "I can't think of an explanation;
therefore, God must have done it," which is the ultimate cop-out,
why doesn't he actually go to the library and work out the
intermediate stages. By the way, he claims not to be a creationist,
which is ludicrous, of course. He is.
PT: What do you make of the existence of a book like this right now?
RD: Nothing very profound. What I make of it is that Michael Behe

decided to write it.

JL: I disagree. As I said before, I think we're experiencing a moral
crisis. A great many people feel a threat to their most fundamental
moral, ethical, and spiritual sensibilities because they feel they
are part of nature; but if nature is amoral, how are they able to be
moral?
RD: But you can feel nothing but contempt for somebody who, because
of their anxiety, actually distorts scientific facts.
JL: Sometimes metaphors are presented as scientific facts, when
they're not. For instance, I'd like to discuss your concept of
"memes" [units of meaning, or ideas] as being similar to genes.
Ideas do everything that genes can't. We have an ability to hold
ideas on the basis of their long-term value, and not their immediate
survivability. Ideas can also influence each other without being
extinguished.
RD: I agree with most of what you say. But if you look at my
original suggestion of memes, they were really almost a rhetorical
device for telling people that in spite of what they'd just read
about the selfish gene, DNA was not everything. Memes provided a way
of saying, Look, genes aren't the only self-replicating entities.
Maybe ideas play that role. I'm not committed to memes as the
explanation for human culture.
JL: One thing that just thrilled me recently, and gave me such a
sense of awe that I was just elevated for days, was the evidence of
life on Mars. I was shocked by how similar the chemistry of this
apparent life was to our own. And I was shocked by the blase
attitude in a lot of the scientific community. It seems to me that
this is an enormously big deal.
RD: It's a tremendously big deal, if it's true. It completely
revolutionizes our estimate of the probability of life arising on a
planet. We've assumed that the origin of life was an improbable
event, the kind of thing that may have only happened once in the
galaxy. If you suddenly find two separate evolutions of life in one
solar system, then immediately you know that life is simply teeming
throughout the universe. That's one reason it's a big deal.
The other reason is that so far, when we think about the general
phenomenon of evolution, we have only a sample of one. We're resting
a whole theory of life and evolution on one sample. If that sample
could be increased to two, even if the second one was a few
micro-fossils, then immediately you would have a huge infusion of
new information and ideas about life as a general phenomenon, not
just a parochial, terrestrial phenomenon.
JL: It means that it's not unreasonable to think about contacting
other life that would be comprehensible to us.
RD: But the trouble is that you are becoming too excited by the
evidence, which a lot of people are pretty skeptical about. I wish
it could be true, but I must say I'm not convinced.
JL: Neither am I, but I'm still entranced by it. I think the sense
of awe and wonder is important to nurture as well.
RD: I absolutely agree.
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